3 issues when posting

1. space around picture doesn't stay put when you save drafts
2. new post tab doesn't allow a save as draft
3. picture sizing arrow when you highlight a pic and try get the edit pop out open needs to go away, it interferes with clicking the edit icon
Blog url: http://idthornell.wordpress.com/

1. Perhaps you're forgetting to save the post in addition to saving the image changes?

2. The New Post tabs on the grey admin bar are for quick posting. The full range of options is available only on the main post editor screen (dashboard sidebar: Posts > Add New, or Posts > All Posts).

Note that there's a long standing glitch with drafts: their content may disappear when you try to publish them. Better avoid using drafts: when you start a new post, write a couple of lines, set the visibility to private, publish the post, continue editing and updating, turn to public when finished.

Re issue 1: When you say you "add 10 pixels", are you sure you're typing just the number (and not "10px")?
If so, then the issue might be associated with the glitch I mentioned. A more foolproof way would be to add code in the Text editor instead of using the "Advanced Settings".
Or are you talking about captioned images perhaps? You can't add space around captioned images the way you described.

I just add 10, and I know it works because the change does show, the default just reasserts itself eventually. Why doesn't WP just make a default space next to a picture that is having text word wrapped around it?

No one else has this problem? How do you word wrap around your pictures?

The alignment icons in the WordPress editor are for aligning text; they are not for aligning images. http://en.support.wordpress.com/visual-editor/#alignment They are used to achieve wrapping text around images on either the right or left hand side, or to display an image that's centered without text on either side of it. If the text beside the images does not occupy the same amount of space that the image beside it does then the text wrapping will continue and the images and text that follow will have a staggered appearance.

Align-left means position left, with the rest of the content wrapping around the right side of the image.
Align-right means position right, with the rest of the content wrapping around the left side of the image.
Align-center means position center, with no wrap-around (= the rest of the content below the image).

Every theme has a maximum displayed image width http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/maximum-image-width/ so it's important to keep that in mind when posting multiple images side-by-side. If you want two images to be side by side on the same line start by setting the alignment of both images to left. To prevent the staggered effect what you do is insert the following snippet of code into the HTML editor after each image/text pair:
<br style="clear:both;" />

I'm sorry but I don't know what is giving rise to that concern beacuse I don't see that happening on your blog in Firefox 15.0.1 or in Chrome 22 or in IE8. Exactly which browser and version of it do you see that happening in?

Why doesn't WP just make a default space next to a picture that is having text word wrapped around it?

This varies from theme to theme, but most themes do create some space around images. In the theme you're using, left/right aligned images have a default 10px margin right/left.
And that's why you're seeing no difference: you're telling the browser to add the amount of space that's already there. If you want more space than the default, you need to add more than 10px.

But if you do it via the option in Advanced Settings, you'll add space both left and right, while normally you need the one of the two only. So better do it manually in the text editor. After inserting a new left aligned image, turn this:<img ETC ETC ETC
to this:<img style="margin-right:18px;" ETC ETC ETC

Change the number to adjust the amount of space.
For right aligned images you'll use margin-left instead of margin-right, of course.

For the images you have already inserted, switch the editor to Text, delete the margin-left or margin-right command, change the number of the other command to the one you prefer.

it isn't happening because I replace the 10 pixel space on my own.
If what you want is 10px, then you shouldn't have to add any horizontal space. Try publishing a post without doing that so we can see if there's some other problem.

Why bother doing any of this at all? What useful purpose does it serve?

The theme is coded to provide the spacing already.

Readers come for ie. to read content and fiddling and farting, tweaking and coding does not draw traffic. It's a colossal waste of time as it does not draw traffic or help create a blog centered community.

WordPress.com blogging isn't fixated on coding now and it never has been. It's focused of introducing bloggers to software on a blogging platform where they don't have to code at all.